I was pretty damn satisfied with my 2006 Classics Megatron. He was gray and black and green and orange and purple and he transformed into a motherfuckin' Nerf gun. The green and orange and purple was really only there to help him pass toy gun regulations, but it really made me love him. Plus, you know, Nerf gun. Bonus.

And so when we were first introduced to the new, bigger Leader Class Megatron, I was initially a little meh. The new toy was in classic colors, meaning the purple and orange and green were gone, and he was back to being silver and black and red. Silver and black and red are fine colors, it's just, y'know, not as interesting to me. Plus the toy fell into the body proportion aesthetic a lot of the new Transformers team's stuff seemed to find itself in -- wide body with thin legs. It's a good set of proportions for Animated Batman, but I prefer my bots to be more stompy.

But, well, Stuff is happening in the comics. Megatron's an Autobot now. He's joined the cast of my favorite Transformers fiction, and it's phenomenal. And this new Leader Class Megatron toy would include a change of Autobot faction stickers to represent that development. Suddenly the toy became Lost Light Megatron, and I had to have it. Sure, the rest of him's not specifically designed after the body he has in the comics now -- it's more of a generic "G1 Megatron as a silver tank" thing -- but it's close enough and that's its official intent and that's how my brain works. Plus he's a big enough toy to actually fit in with my Lost Light display. Slapping an Autobot symbol on my Classics Megatron would result in a guy who stands eye-to-eye with my Rodimus and Brainstorm, and that just won't do.

Original misgivings aside, he's a great toy in person. His skinny legs aren't bothersome when he's actually in front of you in 3D, and they ratchet to and fro with satisfying clicks. Plus his legs are shaped that way to accommodate his real working rubber treads. He's got a set of real working rubber treads on his back and a set in his legs. They don't combine into one single pair of working treads in tank mode, but that's fine.

That the toy is mostly covered in silver paint also helps. He's this giant shiny attractive thing, and there aren't huge spots of unpaintable nylon plastic breaking up his silver like some metallic-painted Transformers have. Sure, there are a handful of unpainted silver spots, but they're not conspicuous or incongruous. Despite not having purple or green, he's an attractive chunk of plastic. He does have some orange detail, though. I'm sure it helps.

In tank mode he's got a rotating turret... if you leave him half-transformed. The proper instructions have you close his pelvis onto the back of the turret, locking it in place, but if you don't connect that piece, he's engineered so that the whole turret rotates. He's got springloaded missile launcher in his barrel/arm cannon, and also both of his secondary tank weapons combine into a longer rifile for him to carry in robot mode. When you lift up his chestplate during transformation, there's a sculpted spark casing under there, with details borrowed from its appearance in Beast Wars.

This toy is also available in Armada Megatron flavor, if you so choose. That version has a new head (with the antlers) and is mostly green, gray, purple, and florescent orange instead of mostly silver and black. But that dude isn't in my comics and I like my original one better, with the real working wrist-shiv deployment, so screw it.

The only huge disappointment with this guy is the sticker sheet. Sure, I like the Autobot logos, and they work well enough on him, but Hasbro also put his original toy's chest deco on there. You know, the little swirly loops that look like chest hair. The problem is, they printed them on a white background, like his symbols, instead of a clear background, so they look pretty terrible on his chest. Reprolabels better solve this one for us. I need those chest swirlies. I'll keep the real swirlie stickers on him until then, because my love for the chest swirlies slightly edges out how terrible I think these stickers look.